[S]ome stupid kids – actual age unknown – have taken over the (verified) @FoxNewPolitics Twitter account and posted a series of messages declaring U.S. President Barack Obama dead on the eve of the Fourth of July, the national day of the United States.

The ‘hackers’ appear to have taken over the account around 2 AM Eastern time, and went on to claim President Obama was shot twice at an Iowa restaurant, that he passed away soon thereafter, and that the shooter’s identity was unknown.

By the time this post was published, the account had seen no tweets for a couple of hours, but neither was it suspended or were any of the fake reports deleted, so whoever gained access to the Twitter account may still have it.

FoxNews.com’s Twitter feed for political news, FoxNewspolitics, was hacked early Monday morning.

Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family.

The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created.

With full control of a Twitter account with 33,000 followers, the Scriptkiddies group began a campaign of misinformation which first attempted to trick followers into believing the account was back in Fox News’ control, before reporting that President Obama had been shot and had then died

Later, disturbing, tweets intended to look as if the account was back in Fox News control:
A campus publication from Stony Brook University in NY, Think Magazine, says it has an interview with a representative of the group that hacked the account:

“I would consider us to be close in relation [to Anonymous], 2 of the members of our group were members of Anonymous,” said a representative of The Script Kiddies, who, for reasons that should be quite clear, asked to remain, yes, anonymous. “I was a member of Anonymous. We hope to be working with them soon.”

The Script Kiddies are looking to join and build upon the efforts of Anonymous and the now-defunct LulzSec in the antisec movement. Corporations and government entities have been prime targets for so-called hacktivist groups looking to uncover and expose information they feel the public has a right to know.

“We are looking to find information about corporations to assist with antisec. Fox News was selected because we figured their security would be just as much of a joke as their reporting,” said the Script Kiddies representative.

The selection of Fox News as a target seems to have less to do with their politics as it does with the fact that they represent corporate America.

“It will be a never ending battle,” said the representative. “The names change from time to time like LulzSec and Anonymous or Script Kiddies. But their will always be a group of people that need to stand up for everyone else and attempt to keep the government in balance with it’s people. Without groups like Anonymous, what is there to prevent corruption?”

“Script Kiddies” is a usually derogatory term referring to people who can’t program, but know enough to copy other hackers’ code for online attacks.